Slashdot Mirror
Valve Announces Half-Life 2 Code Theft Arrests
Ant writes "GameSpot and other sources report arrests were made:
Developer of the much-anticipated and delayed shooter sequel reveals an international wave of arrests has been made.
The Half-Life 2 code theft saga entered a new chapter today when Valve Software announced a series of arrests had been made in the case. According to Valve, suspects in several countries had been taken into custody in relation to charges stemming from the theft of the Half-Life 2 code, distribution of the code, and breaking into Valve's network..."
1. Bad that people steal code.
2. Good for Half-Life 2 cause that means the fans really like it.
3. A possible sign that Valve should hire more people so they can release it sooner.
4. What moron allows an email to install a keyboard sniffer on his computer. Anti-virus and patches take care of a lot of that. Not to mention the network guys should have caught that one quick.
5. Fire the retarded programmer that lets sniffers get installed on his PC and fire the network guys that didn't stop it.
6. Release the game already
At the time I clicked there was also an article on Tom's Hardware. It managed to have less content than the GameSpot article.
Whole lot of nothing here... Valve says some people were arrested, the FBI is declining to say anything than that they arrested some people (the agent who was contacted was smart enough not to say any more than that... if the FBI wants to make a press splash on this then they will, but the desk agent in charge (or whatever their designation is) sure as hell can't make that decision).
I'm sure there will be the standard wild speculation, claims from various people that they know someone who was arrested, etc.
And, of course, the continuing claims from the looneys who say that there was no code theft and that the entire story was made up to hide the fact that the code just wasn't ready. I'm not disputing the second half of that -- the code wasn't, and Valve was stupid to say they were on target. But if they'd made the entire thing up, as the conspiracy theorists say, then the FBI would still have arrested people. Except that it'd be Gabe Newell and the rest of Valve management for filing a false report, lieing to a federal officer, and whatever else they could dredge up to charge them with.
I dont know... maybe I am just a little backwords in my thinking, but Valve could have used this to an advantage. Think about it. If they open source the engine but not the content, wouldn't that allow everyone to make a better engine (hence, easier patching, more features) but not have the content unless they bought it? To me, that looks like the way to go anyway. I can find a bunch of sourceforge projects that do just that. You need the content, not the engine. Valve should sell the content, not the engine. Stealing the code was wrong, and the theives should be punished, but sometimes a business needs to find an advantage to these things.
Just having read about the fbi raid, I can't help but think that everyone should keep a few hundred small and/or dead hard drives around. Gotta keep them busy finding your 'stash'. They'd have to use a ream of paper to document all the computer equipment I have at this location.
Of course, I didn't do anything illegal.
-Adam
The current business model is that when the first game for the new game engine comes out, the mod tools to go with that engine ship as part of the game package. Anybody who has bought the game can create new levels or whole new game concepts.
Once you have a good mod thrown together, you can release it however you want... but in order for your mod content to be playable your users are going to need a licensed copy of the game engine and that for the most part will mean purchasing the original game.
If mods are really good, they can enter the retail channel by striking a deal with the original game writers. At that point, the original game content is replaced with the mods and sent into retail stores as its own box. Profit for all involved.
It'd be nice if there was an OSS gaming engine of record to make the commercial game engines obsolete, but let's face it... those things are not easy to come up with. Furthermore, I'm not sure a "fair" multiplayer environment can ever be done with open source code... what would there to be to block people who have hacked the engine code to give them an autopilot shooter?
Tom's Hardware had a blurb:
Who needs security when you have rabid fans. Perhaps companies should post rewards for tips leading to convictions.The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
actually steam is their 'auto update', server browser, master server, and license key authentication system.
;}
if this was leaked, yes it would take a long time to rework, but it wasn't THAT broken, they decided to release counterstrike:conditionzero via it and no one seems to have said anything.
flat out they are simply behind on their game - BUT they are paying the bill for it, not their publisher remember. valve pays 100% of development costs out of their pocket and gets really good royalty rates from their publishers as a result. This is the trick.
by looking at their E3 2004 video, it is pretty easy to see how the game could be behind schedule - it could be called 'biting off more than you can chew'
Gekido's Lair
So what you're saying is that there was a private key in the HL2 source which was compromised by the code release? And somehow, someone is expected to not have pulled this from memory? Your example doesn't make any sense, and certainly doesn't justify calling my comment "fucking stupid". But, I guess you know it all.
If their goal is just to prevent wallhacks and aimbots before the game goes gold, and not to prevent them in general, then there is already no point whatsoever in buying HL2 unless you plan to play only on LAN or single player, because that means it will likely be hacked up just as much as half-life. Their goal should be to devise technologies that proactively prevent wallhacks and aimbots.
Thinking that there is no such thing as inherently secure is absolutely ignorant. There are ways to do things which are inherently insecure, and there are ways to do things which are inherently secure. Another way to put it is secure by design. We see endless security updates for microsoft products because they are legacy code bases and they need constant band-aids because they are doing something inherently insecure. The same is true of buffer overflows on Unix systems, if you don't use/create functions which are vulnerable to buffer overflows, you won't have buffer overflows. Yet, people keep doing it. I am at a loss to explain it, but I can at least explain the results of their failure to take security into account.
A secure cryptosystem is secure even when the source is released. A game should be the same way, and it is; if having the uncompiled source code makes the game insecure, it doesn't - the game was already insecure.
True, the need for security means moving more processing to the server. It may even mean the end of games which can use a non-dedicated server. Further, the server may need to be as CPU-intensive as the game itself, and maybe even moreso. But, that is a price which I (and millions of others) will be willing to pay if it actually brings a game resistant to cheating. You can rent time on professional gaming servers, and people all over the world have enough money to run full time servers. A game with no cheating will itself likely have allure enough to draw in business to replace any lost through people not willing to pay for the anti-cheating features.
There is no such thing as entirely secure. There are, however, right and wrong ways to do things.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What I'm trying to get at is this: yes, I believe that something was stolen from Valve, and that it involved Half-Life 2. No, I do not believe that it was anywhere near the full source code of the game. Consequently, Valve's claims would then be essentially bunk, unless it was specifically the security chunk of the code that was stolen, which seems mighty convenient. What it all boils down to is that this all happened at a convenient time, which has been established. I didn't have to work yesterday because it was raining in the morning. The forecast said it would storm all day, but instead it really only rained for a couple hours early in the day. So while it was true that tree work would not have been the best idea in the morning, it later became a beautiful day. This is a bad analogy, but the point should be clear.
I am feeling fat and sassy
In fact, this has actually been done. People did indeed compile the HL2 engine, and insert HL content into it, generating a working sort of demo, including a port of some counterstrike files. Don't get all excited yet, it works, but not as well as a retail game. You can find it on suprnova, and related sites.
So, the HL2 leak is QUITE real, you can try it yourself.
Tired of legitimate data sources? Try UNCYCLOPEDIA